


The Rush of Your Skin

by Darkmagyk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-25 23:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6214513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jedi don’t have soulmarks.<br/>Everyone knows that.<br/>Kanan Jarrus is no exceptions.<br/>Hera Syndulla does have a soulmark, like the rest of the galaxy.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jedi didn’t have soulmarks. 

Everyone knew that. 

What was less well known was that it wasn't become of their purity or piety. It wasn't because they were unattached. They didn’t meditate them away in the creche. Force Sensitives had just always been born without them.

They weren't the only ones, the galaxy was big, and a full five percent of people were lacking kind of soulmarks. It was less common in human, only about one percent, but that was still millions of people 

Thank the Force, Kanan couldn't help but think, but he knew, these days, if a kid was born without one in an Imperial hospital, the first thing they did was test the midichlorians.

When he had been younger, Kanan had considered getting a tattoo. An absurdly common name in the shape of a flower or something. Just to pass muster. But fake soulmarks don’t come cheap, and it had always been easier to drink away a day’s labor then to save it.

Plus, he had found that it added to his hard drinking, hard living, roughneck, son of a Hutt persona, and that was always good.

Except when a hard drinking, hard living, roughneck, fell in love. And remembered that maybe, at heart, he was just a kid trying to do the right thing.

Hera _did_ have a soulmate. Kanan hasn't seen the mark, but she’s complained about it to him more than enough times.

“It isn't that big of a deal,” Kanan promised, “Less than what 45% of people meet their soul mates.”

“But over 99% of people who do, stay together as a couple, Kanan. And I can’t devote my time to some random person, the rebellion is too important.” Her eyes were almost pleading, “You know that.”

“I do,” He agreed. And he did. He knew, after a year of this that it was something worth doing, and that it was Hera’s chief priority.

But, though he can’t say he was looking forward to the day some guy waltzed into their lives and swept Hera off her feet, he was sure Hera’s worries were unfounded. He knew, no soulmate of her’s would have anything less than full devotion to her cause.

He had no claim on Hera, regardless. He loved her. He was in love with her, but that didn't matter, soulmate or no. 

He would just stay by her side as long as she wanted him. 

***

“Are you INSANE?” Hera yelled, and Kanan was just a little annoyed by it, because first of all, the answer was obviously yes, she had known that since they met, and second of all, she was very loud, and screaming in his ear, and it was making his head hurt worse. 

He tried to express at least some of that sentiment. But it mostly came out as a garbled moan. Trying to talk made his head hurt worse, too. 

So did Hera’s hands under his arms as she lifted him over her shoulders. 

That was weird, normally Hera made him feel better. 

He was vaguely aware when they reached The Ghost, and he was sure Hera yelled something else. Maybe that’s why she’d yelled in his ear, because he couldn't hear otherwise. 

He felt some swift moment, his whole body hit something reasonably soft, and then there was nothing. 

The next thing he knew was the smell of bacta and the pressure of a hand clasped in his. 

And then his headache was back. He groaned, and the first thing he saw as he opened his eyes was Hera stand up and lean over him, her face contorted in worry.

“Hera,” he whispered, his voice scratchy from disuse. “What happened?”

“What _happened_? You almost died is what happened. Four blaster wounds in the torso. All of our bacta went to patching you up, so you had better not need anything else soon.”

“Sorry.”

“You had better be, Kanan Jarrus, because you are not allowed to die on me,” she instructed firmly. Her face was just inches about his, beautiful as ever, though he didn't like the look on it, and he didn't like that he had caused it.

“I’ll try not to.” 

“You better,” She said, and then, she kissed him. No preamble, no lead up, just put her lips on his.

It was just as amazing as he’d always imagined, but he could tell his lips dry, and his breathing labored, so it can’t have been as good for her. Even so, he gasped into her mouth, pushing past her lips and trying to move his arms, to wrap them around her.

In response, she pulled away. The exact opposite of what he wanted.

“Their will be plenty of time for that, Love.” She told him. “I promise.”

And the rest of the day was mostly just a fuzzy blur of Hera, her wide, green eyes, and her perfect voice calling him ‘love.’ 

***

Kanan Jarrus was not a novice when it came to sex. It might give him a certain level of experience, but it also gave him a very particular incite. Everyone was different. 

There are very few constants across genders or species, let alone individual people

And their was nothing like taking a new lover, and learning them for the first time. 

Their was also, apparently, nothing like being in love. Because discovering a new lover was nearly always exciting, but discovering the person you are in love with, knowing they felt the same way, was a rush he’d never expected. 

She had him stripped to the waste, his boots off and his hair undone around his shoulders. Kanan had never been one for fantasies, his imagination tended to turn on him when given half a chance, replacing pretty girls and boys with shooting clones and dying Jedi. But this was perfect. Hera, leaning over him, flight suit unbuckled and slipping down her chest. 

He wanted to touch every inch of her. Kiss all of her luminescent green skin. He wanted to stay in this moment forever.

The only thing he wanted more was to keep going.

She pushed at his slacks, and he raised up to meet her, sucking a mark on the hollow of her neck as she removed them. Then, almost completely naked, he pulled her close. She went eagerly, resting her forehead on his shoulder for a moment, and then biting at the muscle. 

He used her distraction to roll them over, quite a feet in her narrow cabin bed, but when he was done, their positions had completely reversed. She laughed while he grinned down at her. And wasn’t that the greatest sound, laughing while in bed. 

He peeled off her flight suit slowly. Kissing at all the skin that was revealed. It had the advantage of being incredibly erotic, and of giving him time to figure out the complicated hooks, buckles, zippers, and buttons. 

He kissed her breasts, and licked down her navel, before nipping at both of her hips, and sliding her suit right to her knees. She shuttered in an unexpected but instantly gratifying as he sucked a bruise on to her left thigh. And he had to flash her a grin before he tried it on her other leg. 

Then he glanced down, and his whole body froze. 

Because, there, in all its glory, bright blue against her green skin, was Hera’s soulmark. 

He had never seen it before, even if he’d heard her complaints innumerable times. He hadn't even known where it was, hasn't thought about finding it until this moment. 

“Kanan?” She asked, still slightly breathless, but the note of pleading wasn't for him to continue, it was worry. Worry about his reaction to the fact that the woman he loved had a soulmark clear as day on her body. A soulmark he had found in the midst of their love making

“Kanan,” she repeated, “Please don’t do this. You know I don’t care...You shouldn't either.”

Kanan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then grinned at her again, before he leaned down and kissed her knee, his roaming hands missing the large mark on her thigh like it physically repelled him. 

He ignored it. And soon they were lost in each other again. 

After they were intimately familiar with each other, and sated for the moment, she fell asleep, still naked, and curling close to him. 

He lingered awake and just stared at her and thanked every god he’d ever heard of for his good fortune.

And once again his eyes fell on Hera’s soulmark. 

He’d hated it for a long time. Both because she hated it, and because it represented a threat to their happy, stable togetherness, even before she’d admitted to being as in love with him as he was with her several weeks ago. 

The rules of soulmarks were absolute, and had been studies and established for thousands of years. On most sentients in the galaxy, a tattoo like mark appeared in childhood, it was shaped in some unique way that represented your soulmate, and it was made up of your soulmate's name. If you were lucky enough to be in the large minority of the population that found your soulmate, you’d almost certainly live happily ever after. Sometimes people had more than one mark and name, but they always corresponded to the other people. There were no mismatched sets. And force sensitive people didn't have soulmarks. No matter how hard they fell in love, no matter how much they grew attached. 

And so Kanan couldn't explain the mark on Hera’s leg, still visibly blue in the night-lighting glow of the cabin, a distorted but identifiable arc and lightsaber, the old symbol of the Jedi Order. And bearing the name of a boy long since disappeared. 

_Caleb Dume_. 


	2. Chapter 2

Hera hated Caleb Dume.

Which was maybe a bit unfair, because she’d never met the man. For all she knew he might be a lovely person. But it didn't change her feelings.

When she was younger, it was more of an annoyance. Her mother had been excited when the blue birthmark on her thigh had cleared up, like it did for most people, when she was young. Her father had glanced at it, recognized the name as unlikely to belong to a person on Ryloth, and dismissed the whole thing. 

Hera hadn't cared. She was more interested in the politics her father dealt with, and then, a few years later, when war came to Ryloth, in the ships that swept through the sky.

When she’d left home, a friend who’d hugged her goodbye had advised her to keep an eye out for Caleb Dume with a wink. Hera had dismissed it. She had more important things to do than chance a name around the galaxy, like some foolish holodrama character. 

As she’d gotten deeper into the fray, she’d gotten more and more wary of the idea of Caleb Dume crashing through her life, and ruining her plans and her revolution. 

What would Caleb Dume expect her to give up in exchange for for his love, and what would he do that swept her off her feet and away from the rebellion.

And then Kanan Jarrus had helped to stop a plot to blow up a moon, and Caleb Dume became something so much worse.

He became competition. 

Because Kanan was everything Hera never knew she wanted. 

Oh, there was the obvious, mass appeal qualities: no one could ever accuse him of not being handsome. And despite its occasional corniness, his humor was bright and refreshing. 

And for a rebel he had all the best skills: tactical mind, good pilot, great in a fight, and of course the whole imbued with metaphysical powers thing. 

But for Hera, their was everything else. His kindness, his compassion. His tenacity of spirit. His determination. His revolutionary spirit. The way he'd follow her anywhere, and the glint of joy in his eyes as he did. The smile he got on his face when he looked at her, and thought no one was looking at him. He was the partner she hadn't known she always wanted.

And Caleb Dume was some invisible, unknown threat to it.

He could be dead, or he could be on the other side of the Galaxy, married and with no intention of ever leaving his planet or his wife.?but he could also always just be seconds away from showing up and ruining everything. 

She knew it bothered Kanan too. 

Before she admitted she was as far gone for him as he was for her, they talked about soulmates and soulmarks in broad terms. But since that first night together, when Kanan had seen the words in her skin, he'd staunchly ignored everything about it. He didn't look at it, went out of his way not to touch it, and certainly wouldn't make a game plan for Caleb Dume's arrival.

The generally accepted position was that when and if the soulmate arrived, the current partner gracefully bowed out, with perhaps a short discussion about assets and custody. And Hera knew that Kanan, who was self sacrificial to a fault, who had been raised by a society that prized non-attachment, who loved her more then anything, would walk away from her if he thought it would make her happier in the long run. 

He would bow out to the lesser man (because really, how could any man not be lesser then Kanan.) and he would...she wasn’t sure what. At this point, she couldn’t imagine him going back to his roughneck ways. So, maybe take Ezra, find a secluded hovel and be hermit Jedi. Maybe have Ahsoka find him another cell to work with. Or maybe he’d keep following her. Keep smiling at her when no one was looking, while second best expected her to follow him. 

It really wasn't strange he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about Caleb Dume’s existence. The few times she’d mentioned his name, Kanan had visibly flinched. 

So Hera ignored it, just like him. 

She didn't lie. When Sabine, 14 and too skinny, wild-eyed and unsure, had sat down with her, and asked lots of questions about soulmates and soulmarks and what to expect and what to think about the bright splash of color on her rib, in a language she still hadn't managed to decode, Hera had responded in kind. Had shown her own mark, and talked about its appearance, and talked about how little she cared, how love was much larger than a little mark that had been on your body your whole life.

She knew Zeb had one too. The name of a man on Lasan who he’d just barely been getting to know before the world ended. He said they hadn't be together long, hadn't really been in love yet, but that he could see where it was going, could see the life they would build together. The prospect of anything, after having almost loved then lost, wasn't really worth it. 

She hadn't let Zeb share that with Sabine. 

But she hadn't let him share it with Kanan either. It was a grim prospect all around. 

Soulmarks and soulmates were grim. And Hera hated them.

And none of the was Caleb Dume’s fault.

But he wasn't here. 

And so Hera couldn’t help but blame him. 


	3. Chapter 3

Kanan spent hours staring at Hera’s soulmark. 

Sometimes he’d reach out and touch it, trace the letters with his fingers.

 _Caleb Dume_. 

Like when he’d been a youngling, and learning to write his name under the tutelage of the creche masters. 

He only did it when she was a sleep, because when she was awake he’d have to explain, and he didn’t know what he’d say to defend himself. 

She’d told him once, that she hated Caleb Dume, and he hadn’t had a good response to that, except to think of a fourteen year old Jedi Padawan, and how he’d have thought Hera hung every moon in the galaxy. How he still did. 

It hadn’t broken his heart, or anything, but it had cemented the fact that he couldn’t tell her the truth. 

It sounded like a lie to his own ears, he could only imagine what it would sound like to hers.

And it was still unexplainable and unprecedented. What were the chances that they were, somehow, the only couple in history with mismatched marks. 

Instead he would live with the relief that Caleb Dume wasn’t going to show up in the middle of a mission and through them all of a loop. He’d be comfortable without all the answers. He’d be happy with Hera. 

Besides, she didn’t want to find her soulmate. 

This way, they’d both get what they wanted. 

***

"This is why you're normally our get away pilot." Kanan called across the shipping crates both he and Hera were using as cover. "What's holding them up?"

"I'm sure it was unavoidable, dear," was Hera's sardonic reply, as she ducked around her container and took aim at a trooper. 

"Don't say that, what if it was a trap, like this?"

"Then we'll have to hope they are better at getting out of them then we are." Hera said, "any ideas about that, by the way?"

“Take out their commander, and I’ll cover your exit, you get the door open, and then we hope the kids will meet us at the extraction point.”

“And Chopper?” Hera asked, the note of warning clear, don’t threaten to leave her droid behind. 

“I will be shocked if he isn’t happily waiting at the extraction point now, probably preparing a story for Sabine about how we should be left behind.”

“Chopper wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah,” Kanan agreed, “He’s probably hoping I get killed and you escape unscathed.”

Hera clearly didn’t have a counter for that one, “Well, as long as he got all of the files, and you don’t actually die, our distraction should be worth it.” She took careful aim, and landed a head shot on the stormtrooper in charge, then she raised a tattooed eyebrow at Kanan, who grinned in response, his natural inclination when she offered a challenge. 

He had his lightsaber lit in a moment. He rested his foot on the handhold of one of the crates, winked at Hera, and then propelled himself into the air, using The Force to push himself higher, and then flipping down onto the highest stacked container. He was a bright, visible target for the remaining, less coordinated stormtroopers. 

With each of the shoots fired at him, he made a wide sweeping motion with his lightsaber, less a proper form, and more a wide target, a flashing light. While Hera dived towards the door, before cutting into the control panel and trying to hotwire it open.

Stormtroopers, Kanan had found, couldn’t resist a lightsaber to shoot at, even though it tended to shoot back. 

He swung and swashbuckled, and didn’t keep track of the time. Hera had never let him down before. She wouldn’t this time. But he was likely going to run out of troopers before she was…

“Done,” Her words accompanied the sound of the door sliding open. 

Kanan jumped down and took off running, right behinds Hera. 

They found the Ghost and Chopper waiting for them at the extraction point, an exasperated Ezra and Chopper ushering them up the ramp. 

“What took so long?” Ezra asked as they crossed the threshold. 

“Well, our trap, ended up being a trap.” Kanan said. 

“Did you get the files?” Ezra asked. 

Chopper’s beeped in indignation, insulted they thought he wouldn’t complete his task.

“Who’s flying?” Hera asked, when they started taking off, with her still in the hold.

“Um, Zeb and Sabine were arguing about it last time I was in the cockpit.” 

“Oh no,” Hera said, and then climbed up the ladder faster than Kanan would have thought possible. 

By the time they made it up to the cockpit, both Zeb and Sabine were sitting in the passenger chairs and Hera was staring intently at the screen. 

“Man the guns,” She instructed, not looking at them, “we’re going to have to blast our way out of this.” But like the well trained soldiers they all were, everyone went to their posts, and Kanan took his place in the co-pilots, by Hera’s side. 

The Imperials managed to get a handful of ties in the air behind them, but they are no match for Hera and her gunners. 

Kanan had learned combat piloting as a youngling at the beginning of the Clone Wars from the Hero With Not Fear himself, and he still basked in amazement at Hera’s skill on a daily basis.

But she rocketed into space without any trouble, and Kanan, pulling his weight in the co-pilots seat, ready to support her and back her up, couldn’t imagine a better life anywhere, for anyone. 

They made the jump to hyperspace, and the crew all dispersed, coming out of mission mode. 

Kanan just stayed by Hera’s side, content and happy.

“So, it looks like everyone was successful today,” He said, “How will we celebrate?”

“You can celebrate however you want,” She told him, “but I going to go over the files, before I turn them over to Ahsoka, see if any of the information about us needs to be addressed or if we can just move along.”

“If you’re sure…”

Hera stood up and kissed him, sweet and perfect and a clear dismissal, “Get some rest, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Kanan went back to his room. He meditated for a bit, then practiced his forms, and was just debating between the merits of a nap versus food, when their was a sharp knock on his door. He could tell it was Hera on the other side, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why she’d knock. 

He opened the door, and the look on her face, lost and angry and searching all at once, did nothing to clarify. 

“Hera,” He asked, “What’s wrong?”

She walked in but didn't say anything. She just shoved a data viewer into his arms and sat on his bed.

“What’s going on?”

“Read the file, Kanan.” She bit his name, like a curse, like the one time she’d been drunk and upset and cursed Caleb Dume to the sky, in his honor. 

It didn’t spell good things.

Kanan turned on the viewer, and a holo of himself, taking aim of screen, met him. His file then. All the information the Empire had managed to scrounger together on him. He frowned at it. And then at Hera. He’d be the first to admit that the years before he’d met her were an extended exercise in hedonism and debauchery. But Hera knows about most of it, the worst of it, and regardless, he isn’t sure why the ISB would care about what and who he did in dark alleys behind seedy bars.

He scrolls down past the picture and…

“Oh,” he voiced. 

The data file was not labeled Kanan Jarrus, like he’d expected. 

Instead, in hard black letters, Caleb Dume. 

It was the first time he’d seen it written in 15 years, save for the blue mark on Hera’s leg. The mark that Hera was unconsciously touching now, even though it rested under the flight suit. 

“Hera,” He started, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have anything to say. 

“Caleb Dume.” Hera said, “You’re Caleb Dume.”

“Yes.” It was the truth. 

“And you never thought of mentioning it in the past 5 years? You never thought to mention who you were? You never thought to mention that you knew you were my soulmate.” She raised her voice as she went on, a panicked, desperate kind of accusation. 

“I don’t know that Hera.” He whispered, slumping on his bed, next to Hera, but making a point to sit far away from her, to give her the space she clearly wanted. 

“It’s your name on my mark, Kanan.” 

“I don’t know that,” He said, “I don’t have a soulmark. No force sensitive does.There are no mismatched sets, Hera. It doesn’t make any since.”

“Nothing about The Force makes since, Kanan.” Hera said, which wasn’t really fair, even if it was kind of true. “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me.”

“Because at what point could I have told you, Hera? If I had told you when I first saw it? It would have sounded like a pick up line. And if I told you yesterday, how would that have not sounded like I was trying to reassure you that no one was going to show up out of the blue.”

“But it was true.”

“I couldn’t have proven it.” He countered. “I couldn’t prove I’m Caleb. I don’t have any identification, I didn’t have the Empires records. I kind of figured the Empire didn’t even have those records anymore.” He ran his hand through his hair, an old gesture he’d all but trained himself out of. It messed up his ponytail. “It sounds like a fantasy, Hera.” Her name had always been a prayer to him, a mantra. Even now, in his near hysterical desperation, it still was. “It sounds too good to be true. And without proof, that’s all it was. You never wanted your soulmate, Hera. And I never thought I’d get one. I didn’t see any reason to rock the boat. I didn’t want to make what sounded like children’s tales to justify my love for you, or your’s for me.”

He doesn’t have anything else to say.

“It wasn’t because you didn’t want this?” She asked, in a voice smaller than almost any he’s ever heard, “It wasn’t because you didn’t believe it.” 

“I don’t know what to believe Hera. I don’t know what it means. I just know that I’m Caleb Dume. I know I’d follow you anywhere. I know I’d fight any battle you’d need me to. And I know that I love you more then anything in the galaxy.”

All he’s ever had to offer Hera was ever piece of himself. The difference is now she knows.

She stared at him. Her hand was still ghosting on her thigh, tracing the mark through her cloths. Then she reached out to take the data pad from him, her fingers brushing his, and making his heart race like a kid in a holodrama. She looked at the thick letters under his picture, then at him, as though trying to match the name with the man before her. 

She frowned and straightened up the viewer out of his view, before her face broke out into an absolutely delighted grin. 

She shoved the data viewer into his face again, but her voice was almost giddy as she asked. “Is that you?”

He was still tense, but he couldn’t the stifle the groan at what he saw.

Caleb, himself, just days after being taken as Master Billiba’s padawan, before he went with her to get his lightsaber crystal. 

“It is you,” Hera said, moving closer to him, so he could see the picture as well as she could. “You were adorable. How old were you? Nine? Ten?”

“Thirteen.” 

“No.” She giggled, “But you’re so tiny.” She rested her head on his shoulder, and then touching a delicate green finger to the data view screen, tracing the kid’s too grim face, an act Kanan had been using to hide the fact that he was vibrating with excitement. “But you were already starting to get these frown lines,” She kissed the corner of his mouth and then leaned into his side. “I guess somethings never change.”

“I guess not.” Kanan agreed, wrapping his arm around her, and she made a point to look through the truly worrisome number of pictures and holos the Empire seemed to have gathered from his early years. 

Their was nothing better in the entire Galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out on tumblr, [darkmagyk](http://darkmagyk.tumblr.com/).


End file.
